This App Lets You Browse the Web on Your Apple Watch
Ever wanted to surf the web on your Apple Watch? There is an app called µBrowser ($ 0.99) that lets you do just that, so if your phone is dead or in the gym without it, your Apple Watch can still help you find the things you want online.
Even if you’re not looking for serious use cases, why not have some fun and try something new? This is what led us to µBrowser (pronounced Micro Browser) in the first place.
It’s a fun little browser that works pretty well on the Apple Watch. You can already sort web access on Apple Watch through Siri search results, but the experience leaves a lot to be desired – you can’t edit URLs and you depend on Siri’s ability to understand your query and show you relevant results, but µBrowser gives you you have more control than that.
How µBrowser Works on Apple Watch
µBrowser is optimized for the Apple Watch Series 7, so you can use the built-in keyboard to enter website names. On older Apple Watch models, you’ll have to rely on a handwriting keyboard, dictation, or bookmark links. The fastest way to open various websites, however, is with the µBrowser iPhone companion app, which lets you bookmark and access your favorite URLs in the Apple Watch app.
You don’t want to use μBrowser on your Apple to replace Safari or Google Chrome on iPhone browsers, but μBrowser makes open sites like Lifehacker.com no problem, and it lets you read long articles like this one about the best Chrome renewals of 2021 . The font size is a bit small, but quite large compared to the Apple Watch screen size.
µBrowser has some limitations on watchOS
Unfortunately, µBrowser has to show you a Login prompt every time you load a website. Even if you are not logged into anything, you will have to click Continue to access the websites. The app description mentions that the app uses the watchOS authentication flow, which forces you to have this conversation. During the initial setup, you will see a page that says this restriction will be lifted when Apple allows a developer to do so.
Otherwise, the browser does not work well with pages with a lot of Javascript. Sometimes these pages will automatically reload and items such as embedded videos or images may not load correctly as well. You will also skip the back button – the app forces you to start a new browsing session every time.
This isn’t your normal web browsing at all, but it does work. For just a dollar, it could be worth the chance it comes in handy someday. And sometimes it’s just nice to find new things you can do on your Apple Watch.